size and God
was sitting outside relaxing and enjoying God's creation when i saw what looked like a teeny-tiny bird. i believe it was simply a small piece of wood that looked like a bird from where i was sitting, but nevertheless it put me to thinking. i had thought about this idea a few times before and i think it's a cool insight so i'd like to share it.
so many times we will talk about how BIG God is and how great that is. He's so much bigger than us. i would question that statement. i like the story of the guy who was asked, "How big is your God?" and his reply was, "My God is both big and small. He is so big that He created the universe and is everywhere at once. Yet, at the same time, my God is so small that He lives inside my heart." I thought that was cool because God is not just some big God who made the universe, He is personal and "small".
But I took this idea a step further.
A few months ago I read the book "One Thing" by Sam Storms. I loved it. Storms took two chapters to describe scientific aspects about God's beauty. One was titled "Galactic Grandeur". In it he talks of the immense size of our solar system, our galaxy and the universe, the number of stars, the speed of light, and the one i remember best: one teaspoon of the matter of a neutron star weighs 3 billion tons! Yet our HUGE God controls ALL of it. The next chapter was "Microscopic Majesty" where Storms wrote about atoms and nuclei and quarks and neutrinos and about String Theory. These things are SOOOOO small yet God made those too.
That is when I first started thinking about this: Is God big or small? He's both. No, wait...He's neither. That's the conclusion I finally settled on: God is neither big nor small. Why? Because the words "big" and "small" imply measure. But God is beyond measure. We cannot measure Him. He is transcendent (i.e. He is above and independent of the material universe.). God even transcends size. (Just like God transcends time, but that's a whole other blog in itself.)
It's not like God grows really big and uses a lot of power and energy to create and sustain stars one moment and then the next moment He shrinks down in order to maintain or repair an atom. It's not like His fingers have to be extra nimble and dextrous in order to create smaller things. Or like we can compare Him to unimaginably large giants who work on the powerhouses of the stars.
We often times think that we are normal size and stars are big and atoms are small. This is only true when we measure things relatively. But imagine if you were God. Would certain things be "small" and others "big"? We say certain things are small and this indicates that maybe it is easier for us to handle or pick up (e.g. "The box of books was small and light, I could carry it easily."). We say that things are big to compare them to other things (e.g. "The bookshelf was big, I had to disassemble it before I could move it.") But God is not limited or constrained in such ways.
God is neither big nor small. God simply is...
so many times we will talk about how BIG God is and how great that is. He's so much bigger than us. i would question that statement. i like the story of the guy who was asked, "How big is your God?" and his reply was, "My God is both big and small. He is so big that He created the universe and is everywhere at once. Yet, at the same time, my God is so small that He lives inside my heart." I thought that was cool because God is not just some big God who made the universe, He is personal and "small".
But I took this idea a step further.
A few months ago I read the book "One Thing" by Sam Storms. I loved it. Storms took two chapters to describe scientific aspects about God's beauty. One was titled "Galactic Grandeur". In it he talks of the immense size of our solar system, our galaxy and the universe, the number of stars, the speed of light, and the one i remember best: one teaspoon of the matter of a neutron star weighs 3 billion tons! Yet our HUGE God controls ALL of it. The next chapter was "Microscopic Majesty" where Storms wrote about atoms and nuclei and quarks and neutrinos and about String Theory. These things are SOOOOO small yet God made those too.
That is when I first started thinking about this: Is God big or small? He's both. No, wait...He's neither. That's the conclusion I finally settled on: God is neither big nor small. Why? Because the words "big" and "small" imply measure. But God is beyond measure. We cannot measure Him. He is transcendent (i.e. He is above and independent of the material universe.). God even transcends size. (Just like God transcends time, but that's a whole other blog in itself.)
It's not like God grows really big and uses a lot of power and energy to create and sustain stars one moment and then the next moment He shrinks down in order to maintain or repair an atom. It's not like His fingers have to be extra nimble and dextrous in order to create smaller things. Or like we can compare Him to unimaginably large giants who work on the powerhouses of the stars.
We often times think that we are normal size and stars are big and atoms are small. This is only true when we measure things relatively. But imagine if you were God. Would certain things be "small" and others "big"? We say certain things are small and this indicates that maybe it is easier for us to handle or pick up (e.g. "The box of books was small and light, I could carry it easily."). We say that things are big to compare them to other things (e.g. "The bookshelf was big, I had to disassemble it before I could move it.") But God is not limited or constrained in such ways.
God is neither big nor small. God simply is...
posted by Elias at 15:58
2 Comments:
sigh...God is God!
wow what a God we serve!
Amazing post! I'll be thinking about that for quite a while.
Reminds me of Exodus 3:14: And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.
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